


Attachments

by bitboozy



Series: Domesticated [4]
Category: Broadchurch
Genre: F/M, Family, Fluff OOPS, New Relationship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 14:58:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20084116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitboozy/pseuds/bitboozy
Summary: For a moment all they do is smile at each other, so great is their relief at being in the same room again.





	Attachments

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry these are so fluffy and plotless, they're in a honeymoon phase! If you aren't totally hating these, let me know! And thanks so much for reading.

It’s been three days since Alec Hardy has last laid eyes on Ellie Miller. Which is much too much for a new relationship to bear with any dignity. During this time he has gotten more work done than he ever thought possible, including work that probably did not need to be done. He has also learned to play Pokemon Go, courtesy of Daisy, and developed a macabre fascination with _The Handmaid’s Tale _series. He has even meal prepped after reading several slightly dull articles on the subject. He goes to bed at 10pm, with the help of a drink or two to ensure he actually falls asleep. He sleeps in until the last possible moment. Every second he has to spend without her is frankly one he’d rather sleep through.

Fred is sick, you see. The kind of sick where visitors trying to help are really just more of a disturbance. Ellie has had to call off work in favor of cleaning up vomit and watching _Peppa Pig_. She has forbidden Alec from checking on them in person. She texts him once in a while to confirm she’s alive but that’s it.

On this afternoon, he has decided he’s had quite enough of that. The evening before, she had texted him: **Fever gone. **And he feels that is permission enough to break this quarantine.

She’s curled up on the couch with Fred, who is asleep on her stomach. _Peppa Pig _still graces her television because the remote is too far away. Fortunately, her mobile is right next to her when it vibrates.

**Miss you.**

She smiles. **I miss adult conversation. **

Fred stirs a bit the next time her phone buzzes, but it’s clear he’s out cold. **You’re in luck**, she reads on the screen, and then she hears a faint knock on the front door.

She sighs, but she can’t help but smile with relief. The only thing that’s gotten her through the last three days is the memory of his electrified fingertips trailing along her skin. **Door’s unlocked.**

She listens to the front door open, and then finally he appears in the doorway to the sitting room. It’s quite a sight. An exhausted Ellie with a passed out Fred clinging to her. He’s nearing five now, and truth be told she still relishes the chance to cuddle him like this.

For a moment all they do is smile at each other, so great is their relief at being in the same room again.

He leans against the doorframe. “God, you’re beautiful.”

She blushes all over and shakes her head. “Oh come off it,” she says, averting her eyes from his.

But he means it. There’s something about Ellie in her very natural, easy state of motherhood that is so lovely and moving he can hardly bear it. Tess was never quite like this. A good mother, certainly, but not a very, shall we say, _snuggly _one. 

“You are,” he insists, walking over to the couch. He leans over and plants a gentle kiss on her lips, then moves to sit beside her. He has to lift Fred’s little legs a bit to do so, then replaces his legs on his lap as he moves closer to her, an arm around her shoulders. He kisses her temple, then she rests her head on his shoulder.

Alec observes Fred with a small bit of wonderment. “Quite fetching when he’s asleep, isn’t he.”

Ellie chuckles. “A right angel.”

Fred shifts, squirming against her before burying his face in her breasts, one little hand grasping a fistful of her shirt and the other hanging off her, limp.

“Looks like the wee lad is trying to climb back inside you,” Alec comments.

Ellie squeezes Fred tightly and smiles. “Tom used to fall asleep with a hand stuck inside my bra until he was four,” she says, chuckling softly at the memory. “Even after you’ve weened them, it still takes a good long time before they can let these go, as it were.”

“Well. I can understand that,” he quips, making her laugh again.

“I do miss nursing,” she says wistfully, not so much to him as to herself. “Aside from the occasional bite, it was always the most relaxing part of my day. Like Xanax. The quiet intimacy of it…for them, the safety of it. I’d nurse Fred in the rocking chair at night, half in the dark, and Joe would just stand in the doorway and watch.”

She’s almost reached the point now where she can look back on happy times with Joe and view them simply as memories of another life, another life that was real, but is gone now. With the help of her therapist, she has finally begun to accept that Joe loved her, that their relationship was real and profound, but that Joe was sick. It doesn’t totally erase the nightmares that still plague her from time to time. But it’s a start. 

“He’d say he’d never seen something so beautiful. And I’d say, ‘wait ‘til his chompers come in.’” 

Alec smiles. He doesn’t like to think about Joe, to think about her life with him before – for _many _reasons – but he wants her to be at peace with the past, and he’ll do whatever it takes to ease that transition for her.

“Sorry,” she says suddenly. “Don’t know why I’m going on.”

He tightens his arm around her. “Go on as much as you like. I’ve spent the last three days missing you, I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

She tilts her head up to look at him. “Really missed me, eh?”

“Like the bloody dickens.”

Fred slips a hand inside Ellie’s shirt now. She’s not wearing a bra, so he has full access.

“Cheeky bugger,” Alec says, impressed with the boy’s timing.

“Just like his brother,” Ellie says, perfectly content. 

“Where _is _Tom?”

“Sent him off to Lucy’s when Fred came down with it. One vomiting child is nothing compared to two,” she explains. “Never again.”

“And how is it you’ve not come down with it yourself?”

“Mum of two boys. Immune system of steel.”

He’s amazed, now he thinks about it, of what she’s been able to accomplish and endure as a single mother for these last few years. He remembers that Fred was only a year and some change when Joe was arrested. Yes, he’s a single father to Daisy now, but it’s not the same. He’s not raising Daisy alone, and never had to. Not the way Ellie is. Plus a demanding full-time job. He could never have done it. Frankly he’s not sure Tess could have either. And now here she is, her tiny son burrowing himself into her, after three days of vomit and fevers, perfectly content. Totally unbothered. Happy to have her child’s hand sleepily grasping at her breast. The intimacy of motherhood is something he can never quite understand.

He has no idea how on earth she has room for _him _in her life.

“Oof,” she shifts a bit suddenly. “Need to cut his nails again soon.”

“Is this okay?” He’s looking at her, open and moved.

“What? You being here?” She asks. “You’re quite warm and snuggly." 

“Ellie.”

She looks up.

“Me and you. Do you have time for this?”

She frowns. “Time? I’m alive, I’ve got literally nothing _but _time.”

“I just mean….well. It’s, it’s, you know.” He falters. “A lot.”

She pauses to think, and his heart nearly stops. 

“It _was _a lot. Before. Wanting to be with you, wondering if it would ever happen, trying to…navigate whatever our relationship used to be,” she replies, thoughtfully. “But now we’re together it’s easy. It doesn’t take up my time, it _is _my time. It’s how my time is meant to be spent.”

He feels a bit of moisture build up in his eyes and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

“You’re sweet, you know,” she says, straining upward to kiss his cheek. “I know you hate to be, but you really are very sweet.” Fred accidentally squeezes her breast. “_Ow_, fuck’s sake.”

He laughs, grateful for the comic relief. She’s always been good at that. And so, clearly, is Fred.

“I adore you.”

She looks up at him again, a lazy smile on her lips. “I know,” she replies, with a wiggle of her eyebrows. 

He tries to kiss the smile off her face, but the smile doesn’t go away.

***


End file.
